Somewhere around 1984, I got my first video membership. It was a small mom-and-pop store in an even smaller town, with the most eye-catching posters circling my being, relating to mid-80ers like Re-Animator, From Beyond and Ghoulies, for example.

And though I completely forgot about the 1987 movie The Kindred, I will never forget that poster featuring a baby’s bottle with a … slimy thing inside. It still haunts me.

Kindly physician Dr. Lloyd (Rod Steiger) apparently has an evil side, finding accident victims and conducting experiments. While trying to find some “journals” or whatever scientists do with written notes, he inadvertently kills his lab partner.

The deceased lab partner’s son, John (David Allen Brooks), who is also a doctor, is down with his girlfriend and some other students to find the “journals” on the experiment. Meanwhile, as John’s dog waits on the porch, a slimy thing breaks out of the cellar, eating him.

As all parties converge in the near-creepy house, slimy things get in through people’s skin, rooting around in the body and creating a new quasi-lifeform. It doesn’t make much sense, but it does have Oscar winner Steiger consumed by the monster, so that’s something!

But most of the movie is quite forgettable. I even forgot that Max Headroom’s Amanda Pays plays a mysterious scientist. She’s quite good in the thankless role, more than the movie deserves. But as far as I can see, this tale of science amok is, like the experiments, pretty half-baked.

I still like that poster, though. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

While making a documentary for a community college project, four students suddenly switch subjects when they learn about a serial killer known as Mister Creep. Possibly an urban legend, he’s said to have slain 200 people in 20 years. He broadcasts unnerving videos starring his victims and a creepy puppet. And he has a clown mask permanently fused to his face. I mean, coulrophobic chillers are so in right now; what enterprising filmmaker wouldn’t pivot?

Living up to its title within minutes, Mister Creepy is twisted enough to make you wonder if a true madman isn’t plucking the strings. It’s only Texas-based Isaac Rodriguez, whose A Town Full of Ghosts earlier this year also impressed with enough menace to make up for deficiencies elsewhere.

Like that movie, Mister Creep falls under found footage, but segmented to move quickly through its 67 minutes. A nighttime sequence inside an “abandoned” police station plays particularly spooky, containing one of the movie’s two alarmingly good shocks; the other, you likely won’t see coming. —Rod Lott

Get it on VOD Dec. 5.